Both worked -- one as a plumber, the other less legitimately -- and both were married.

They were buddies.

Until the bomb went off.

Back when it happened, no one could see how that day in 1984 would motivate detectives, state troopers, prosecutors, private investigators and deputies across Ohio for the next 21 years.

It would take a murder-for-hire plot, the mystery of a missing teenager and the determination of a few detectives and a government lawyer to finally shut down Joe Rosebrook.

After a grand jury indicted him last year on 25 charges, including racketeering, he might have spent the rest of his life in prison. But he took a deal and pleaded guilty last month to conspiracy to commit aggravated murder and seven theft-related charges.

The 49-year-old felon began serving a 10-year prison sentence last week. He still owes $87,882 in restitution for stolen cars, trucks and antiques, including more than $75,000 from cases in which he wasn't convicted.

His wife has sold their $384,000, 75-acre Logan County property. A new owner now spends nearly every night clearing away truckloads of car doors, truck beds, old batteries and scrap parts that litter the land. He pulls junk tires from his pond and wonders how he's going to get rid of a hulking, rusted car crusher in the middle of his back field.

The new owner stores his tools and equipment in the expansive pole barn in which Rosebrook tore down and rebuilt stolen cars, trucks, tractors, campers and backhoes -- anything with wheels.

For two decades, Rosebrook ran a multimillion-dollar chop shop there and in Union County. Car thieves fanned out across Ohio to feed his operation, stealing from private garages and dealerships and off the streets.

Rosebrook in recent years had expanded to eBay, shipping thousands of dollars worth of car parts as far as Hawaii, Washington and Canada -- all under the noses of the law enforcers.

Not long before the bombing, they thought they had him nailed.

Scrutiny begins

Law enforcement first caught wind of Rosebrook -- a high-school dropout and father of three -- about 25 years ago. He was listed as a suspect in several unsolved thefts, mostly of junk and parts from inside barns.

Then in October 1983, deputies caught his buddy Payne with stolen goods.

Payne squealed.

He and Rosebrook had broken into a rural Union County barn and stolen an engine, a table saw and rolls of insulation. There had been other thefts, too.

Prosecutors charged Payne and Rosebrook with theft and breaking and entering. Payne took a deal. Rosebrook refused.

He hired a big-name attorney and requested a trial.

Opening statements were set for June 13, 1984, and Payne was set to testify against his buddy.

On June 11, Payne climbed into the 1980 Ford in his driveway and turned the key.

The van exploded.

Payne lost his right foot and part of an arm. FBI agents found traces of dynamite under the van. Officials suspected that Rosebrook was involved.

"Anyone who goes to court against me is a dead SOB," he had once said.

He denies any connection.

"Ray Payne had made a lot of people mad," Rosebrook said in March. "There were a lot of people that could have done that to him."

Payne blamed only one: Rosebrook.

The explosion delayed the trial. Guards stood at Payne's hospital bedside as prosecutors waited to see whether he would survive.

Three months later, Payne took the witness stand. Despite being coached by prosecutors not to mention the explosion, he accused Rosebrook of trying to kill him.

The trial was about breaking and entering, not a bombing, so the judge declared a mistrial.

By then, Rosebrook faced related theft charges in Logan County, so he cut a deal. He pleaded guilty and served a year in prison.

The bombing remains unsolved.

Detective Jon Stout, of the Logan County sheriff's office, says it didn't really matter who wired that van. The message was clear:

"You don't talk about Joe Rosebrook."

Payne still doesn't, except to say that he no longer blames Rosebrook.

"What's done is done," he said recently. "It's something I'd rather not talk about."

Suspicion grows

About a year after Rosebrook finished his first stay in prison in 1986, a state trooper stopped a Ford pickup on a northern Ohio interstate. The truck had been chopped. Its parts had come from other vehicles, and its vehicle identification number was counterfeit.

The trooper impounded the truck and researched its title. At one point, the title had passed through the hands of a friend of Rosebrook's.

The trooper questioned that friend, who drove another altered Ford pickup to his interview with officials. His truck was impounded, too.

A task force formed, and the investigation focused on three men, including Rosebrook.

Authorities spent a year tracking stolen cars and parts. At the time, Rosebrook was living in a house trailer in western Union County. His wife of 13 years was divorcing him. Most of his friends were in Union and Logan counties, and he was moving to the West Mansfield area in eastern Logan County. Deputies focused their investigation there.

"We sat in West Mansfield one weekend and just ran license plates," said Union County sheriff's Lt. Jeff Frisch, a task force member. Nearly every Ford truck they saw looked new, but each registration came back old.

"It was an epidemic, an infestation," Frisch said.

In August 1988, officers seized 27 vehicles from private owners in eight counties. Authorities said Rosebrook and friends had altered each one.

The deputies watched their evidence drive away, however, when judges released some of the vehicles because the owners all denied knowing they were stolen.

Three months later, deputies armed with a search warrant camped at Rosebrook's rural Union County property for three days and nights, looking for evidence.

In Rosebrook's garage, they found a truck that someone was in the process of rebuilding.

Nearly two dozen men scoured the land.

They used metal detectors, then dug up the farm with backhoes and bulldozers, looking for buried parts.

They found hundreds of parts scattered around the weedy lot. They recovered dozens of steering columns with holes where the ignition switches had been punched out. They found piles of stolen license plates and scrap steel stripped from doors and truck beds that couldn't be reused.

They found plenty of junk, but nothing that could be traced.

Rosebrook's estranged wife cooperated, but that and the evidence she allowed them to gather weren't enough.

Few witnesses would talk.

"When we got close to solving something connected to him, we'd hear the same thing over and over again: 'I'm better off alive in jail than out here and dead,' " Stout said. "It was scary, the influence he had."

One of the last notations in that investigation gave little hope for prosecution.

"In spite of (the wife's) testimony that she observed her husband bringing in vehicles all hours of the day and night and watching these same vehicles leave in a completely different color or condition . . . and in spite of all the evidence found at the Rosebrook property, the prosecution states we have no case," a sheriff's report said.

Retired Union County Prosecutor R. Larry Schneider said he doesn't recall why he didn't present the case to a grand jury.

By the time the task force had ended its work, Rosebrook was living in Logan County. He became Sheriff Michael Henry's problem.

Investigation widens

Over the years, Henry came to know about Rosebrook -- that he was slippery, and his relatives and buddies were loyal.

"He was like Robin Hood," said Jeff Cooper, chief of the Logan County sheriff's office detective bureau. "Someone needed a part; he had it. Someone needed a vehicle; he got it for them. If they needed money, they'd ask Joe."

Henry credits his detectives for sticking to the case. Driven in their pursuit, they often worked the case on their own time.

They say they and their families have been threatened, and they've been tailed and investigated by a private detective Rosebrook hired.

Henry has tried during his entire 18-year career as sheriff to coax state and federal authorities to help crack the Rosebrook case.

"No one was ever interested," Henry said. "I think they thought we were overestimating what this guy was doing. Now they know."

Finally, in 2002, Logan County Prosecutor Gerald Heaton decided that the evidence pointed to a criminal enterprise; Rosebrook could be charged with racketeering.

But putting together such an extensive case would require additional resources. So the chief legal counsel for the Ohio Organized Crime Investigations Commission in the attorney general's office took the case.

"This is one of the most extensive cases I've ever seen," said Carol Hamilton O'Brien. "I have a real strong feeling about people who try to hurt witnesses. This guy had to be stopped."

A national insurance-fraud investigator once told a deputy that Rosebrook was quite possibly the most prolific vehicle chopper in the country.

An informant once told investigators that Rosebrook made about $40,000 a month chopping stolen vehicles.

That's probably a solid figure, said Ivan Blackman, director of vehicle investigations for the National Insurance Crime Bureau. The Chicago agency investigates fraud and works with law enforcement and insurance companies.

Its agents also tracked Rosebrook at times.

One key to his success: "He never fished in his own pond, or sold crack on his own corner, so to speak," Stout said.

Over the years, various sources have given detectives information a little at a time about how Rosebrook operated. Taken together, detectives say, those statements suggest that Rosebrook operated a textbook chop shop.

Rosebrook often took custom orders and then hired someone to steal the preferred car or truck.

The pullers, as the thieves are known, typically worked for $1,000 and a bag of pot. They left the stolen goods in a public location, often the Mary Rutan Hospital parking lot in Bellefontaine.

When no one was looking, Rosebrook grabbed the vehicle and hauled it to his barn or a friend's shop.

In an hour's time, Rosebrook -- often alone, sometimes with a few friends -- would strip it down, grind off any identifying numbers, and remove the interior and anything worth something. He parceled out the parts a piece at a time, making thousands of dollars for an hour's work.

Sometimes he shipped out parts. Sometimes he delivered them or sold them to people who came to his garage. A car or truck can be worth more as parts. And stolen parts aren't as easily tracked as stolen cars.

"Intelligent crooks keep up with what people want," Blackman said. "The manual labor is more than worth it to them."

Stout agreed that Rosebrook was smart and efficient.

"These vehicles would come in overnight and be gone by morning," he said. "He was fast, and that's one reason he was hard to catch. Things that could be identified didn't hang around long."

Sometimes Rosebrook bought wrecked cars at auction or from a junkyard. Then he took parts from a stolen car of the same model and changed out the body, swapped the vehicle identification numbers and produced a "new" vehicle for sale.

When deputies arrested him a year ago, they found on his land, among other things, a Dodge pickup valued at $22,000, a Ford truck worth nearly $40,000, a 1957 Chevrolet and a 1970 Nova. All had been stolen.

Even though some had been chopped, deputies could prove that the vehicles were stolen because Rosebrook had slipped.

Car manufacturers now hide vehicle identification numbers.

Rosebrook had missed a few, and the vehicles could be traced.

It's not surprising, Blackman said, that it took so long for him to stumble.

"These operations seem unsophisticated, like small potatoes on the surface," Blackman said "But behind the scenes, these guys get a rhythm, a pattern, and their reach is far."

Defenders speak out

The contents of five binders labeled "Rosebrook" -- thousands of tattered, taped and faded pages stacked in an evidence room -- tell one story.

Friends and family packed the courtroom at his April 4 sentencing. They have placed ads in the local newspaper, publicly pledging love and support: "Thinking of you. We all believe in you."

Rosebrook's current wife said he worked long hours nearly every day during the 20 years she's known him. He was always fixing, selling or towing cars legitimately. The couple, who have been married 14 years, ran a Bellefontaine car lot for six years in the 1990s.

Rosebrook, one of three boys, was born and raised in eastern Logan County. He dropped out of Benjamin Logan High School in the ninth grade and completed his education while serving a year in the Army.

At various times, he trimmed trees, excavated building sites, restored classic cars and ran a junkyard to make a living.

"Maybe we didn't keep the paperwork records that we should have," Lorrinda Rosebrook said, "but we've worked our asses off to earn our money."

Her husband would give anything to a friend in need and nearly as much to a stranger in trouble, she said.

"That's what he did more than anything -- help others," she said. "And for these cops, it's personal."

His 28-year-old daughter, Penny, said that years of aggressive pursuit by lawmen have taken a toll. She recently moved because she felt threatened by Stout, she said.

Her father said from jail that it's been that way for 20 years.

Even in an ill-fitting, county-issued orange jumpsuit, he appeared confident. His hands were steady, his gaze dead on. Logan County authorities, he said, have always been jealous of him.

"I do body work, excavating work, and I buy and sell scrap junk. That's it. I've worked hard for what I have, and they wanted it all."

All he ever wanted, he said, was to restore and paint old muscle cars. In the largest of the steel outbuildings at his former property, he built a ventilated paint booth. It's where deputies last year found the stolen Ford truck with identification numbers intact.

His only mistake, he said, was that while under house arrest in July, he paid $2,000 and promised $13,000 more to someone who said he would kill a man for him.

The target was a witness in the case that landed him in prison, another former longtime buddy, who had threatened Rosebrook's family.

Case continues

For all the talk of cars and trucks and parts, however, this case stopped being about cars for Stout in 1999.

That's when a man connected to Rosebrook disappeared.

Michael Lattimer, an 18-year-old high-school dropout from the Logan County village of Rushsylvania, had a troubled past. His father was absent. His mother has a criminal record.

He found a new friend in Rosebrook in 1999.

By that time, Rosebrook and his buddies were suspected of breaking into unoccupied homes and stealing antiques from elderly people who had moved to nursing homes.

Lattimer helped, but he got caught.

Stout struck a deal with him, hoping it would lead to Rosebrook. Lattimer told them everything he knew.

"I told him to go home, keep his mouth shut, and no one would ever even know he'd been caught," Stout said. "But the perfect story never has a perfect ending."

Lattimer eventually told Rosebrook that he was in trouble, and Stout speculates that Lattimer told Rosebrook that he'd given him up.

So the cops picked up Lattimer again, this time for drugs, and made arrangements to try to keep him safe.

But on Nov. 23, 1999, not long after posting bond at the Logan County jail, Lattimer visited his grandma's Rushsylvania home and took a phone call.

It was Rosebrook, Donna Huffman said. Her grandson spoke of a truck deal and clearly didn't want to meet Rosebrook, but Lattimer left the house anyway.

He was last seen getting into Rosebrook's car near the Rushsylvania post office.

He missed the family's Thanksgiving dinner two days later, and his mom worried.

"He wasn't a bad kid," Tina Huffman said. "But I had a bad feeling from the very beginning when he started running with Rosebrook and some of those guys.

This story is based in part on reviews of 25 years worth of investigators' files in Union and Logan counties, including tapes and transcripts of official interviews with informants and witnesses.

Transcripts, legal filings, depositions and witness interviews from cases in Union, Logan and Marion County common pleas courts also were reviewed.

Those interviewed for confirmation were current and retired law officers in several other Ohio counties, including Lonnie Elmore, John Overly, Charles Williams, Jamie Patton, Dennis Potts and Phil Bailey; current and former prosecutors and attorneys connected with the various cases, including David Phillips; acquaintances of both Joe Rosebrook and Mike Lattimer; and owners of some of the stolen vehicles.

Rosebrook's comments are from an interview conducted March 17 at the Logan County Jail.

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